Related papers: Simulating defect textures on coalescing nematic s…
We present a theoretical study of the director fields and energetics of nematic liquid crystal shells with two pairs of surface defects. The pairs of defects can undergo abrupt transitions between a configuration of maximum separation to at…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
Inspired by recent experiments that highlight the role of nematic defects in the morphogenesis of epithelial tissues, we develop a minimal framework to study the dynamics of an active curved surface driven by its nematic texture. Allowing…
Mechanically quenching a thin film of smectic-C liquid crystal results in the formation of a dense array of thousands of topological defects in the director field. The subsequent rapid coarsening of the film texture by the mutual…
In two dimensional nematics, topological defects are point like singularities with both a charge and a phase. We study topological defects within curved nematic textures on the surface of a cylinder. This allows us to isolate the effect of…
Using computer simulations we investigate the microscopic structure of the singular director field within a nematic droplet. As a theoretical model for nematic liquid crystals we take hard spherocylinders. To induce an overall topological…
The transition from a nematic to an isotropic state in a self-closing spherical liquid crystal shell with tangential alignment is a stimulating phenomenon to investigate, as the topology dictates that the shell exhibits local isotropic…
We present a hydrodynamic model for a thin spherical shell of active nematic liquid crystal with an arbitrary configuration of defects. The active flows generated by defects in the director lead to the formation of stable vortices,…
The process of coalescence of two identical liquid drops is simulated numerically in the framework of two essentially different mathematical models, and the results are compared with experimental data on the very early stages of the…
We present a novel, self-consistent and robust theoretical model to investigate elastic interactions between topological defects in liquid crystal shells. Accounting for the non-concentric nature of the shell in a simple manner, we are able…
Topological defects play a central role in the formation and organization of various biological systems. Historically, such nonequilibrium defects have been mainly studied in the context of homogeneous active nematics. Phase-separated…
Coalescence of droplets is an ubiquitous phenomenon in chemical, physical and biolog-ical systems. The process of merging of liquid objects has been studied during the pastyears experimentally and theoretically in different geometries. We…
The transition between necking-mediated tensile failure of glasses, at elevated temperatures and/or low strain-rates, and shear-banding-mediated tensile failure, at low temperatures and/or high strain-rates, is investigated using tensile…
This letter presents a theory on the coalescence of two spherical liquid droplets that are initially stationary. The evolution of the radius of a liquid neck formed upon coalescence was formulated as an initial value problem and then solved…
In this paper we rigorously investigate the emergence of defects on Nematic Shells with genus different from one. This phenomenon is related to a non trivial interplay between the topology of the shell and the alignment of the director…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…
The interface formation model is applied to describe the initial stages of the coalescence of two liquid drops in the presence of a viscous ambient fluid whose dynamics is fully accounted for. Our focus is on understanding (a) how this…
Field theories predict that phase transitions sequentially breaking continuous and discrete symmetries can generate hybrid topological structures in which defects of different dimensionalities merge. We report experimental and numerical…
Combining high-speed photography with electric current measurement, we investigate the electrocoalescence of Pickering emulsion droplets. Under high enough electric field, the originally-stable droplets coalesce via two distinct approaches:…